Cyprus Mail Profile

I’ve learned a bit about his lifestyle – [Hanson] reads widely; he goes biking; he likes movies, and peruses ‘100 Best Films’ lists to check how many he’s seen – but not very much. A profile is supposed to be personal, I remind him. But he shakes his head.

When interviewers talk to a musician or an athlete (or indeed a well-known academic), he points out, they’re forever asking them to ‘tell me about the rest of your life’ – yet “the way people become famous musicians or athletes is to focus so much of their energy on this professional thing, [so] there usually isn’t much of a ‘rest of their life’. And that’s not a message people usually want to hear, so they make up silly things in order to seem personal.”